I'm unemployed and just dropped out of an attempted sales job. Wondering how people here got in to their lines of work. Flex your happiness/income/hot babes/xbox live cards all you like for mutual motivations.
law student
completely reliant on top-band university loans
looking towards career in US political science/analysis
It's a drag at the moment, but I'm sure it'll pick up at some point.
I work retail bakery alongside school.
Today is going to really suck because the holidays mean i get bombarded with ridiculous overstocking and get to throwaway more food that costs more than i make before it gets marked up
It sucks, and it kills my motivation but it lets me semi-support myself.
IT for a government agency.
imagine being unemployed
t. me
(well it's not too bad since the interest from my savings is enough spending money for a year)
Software development for pharmaceutical production management.
Used to be a junior EMT officer but left the service due to health condition.
Worked a little bit for a UK government agency dealing with benefit fraud (it's not very exciting, mostly just paperwork)
Currently work in water management for a different government agency. Will be a student again as I'm getting qualification related to water management but I'll keep working alongside it.
I have 5 jobs, but they are all independent from each other
Photographer - I freelance as a photographer
Photo Assistant - I work with my previous boss when he needs me. Mostly commercial shoots
Catalog photographer - I shoot for a high end retail rental brand, so its mannequin shots
Teacher - I work for my mum as a abacus teacher, helping kids learn their maths
Chef - I work in a restaurant that does semi fine dining, bistro and cafe stuff.
Technically not jobs - Food stylist, when there are food shoots involved, and colourist, mostly amateur colouring work of old B&W photos.
IT for a huge hospital system
soon to be either IT (ProjecT) management or IT Systems engineering, hopefully
Software developer. Did it in my spare time since middle school basically, Lua + Gmod was the first place it actually started to make sense. Basically wrote code and learned practical software (Image Editing, 3D Modelling, Video Editing, Audio) from then on could, and then went to college for it.
Now I do:
Game Development full time for a medium sized company.
"Side Hustle" company developing niche audio plugins.
Good, hard, well paying work that is very fulfilling. Couldn't be happier!
Fish and reptile at a pet store. It's only minimum wage, but I can live off it, I like my coworkers, and getting to work with animals is like a dream come true.
We also typically seem to have really reasonable customers most of the time, which is totally opposite of the retail jobs I've worked in the past. I fucking live for those days where we get a guest interested in adopting, and they're totally receptive to all the advice and products I suggest, and don't try to fight me every step of the way.
Broadcast Engineer for NBC.
It's kind of boring sometimes but I enjoy it usually. Anchors and reporters are a pretty funny bunch of people, so my day isn't super boring if I go out into the news room and hang out but that's not always possible. Sometimes I literally sit in my office and just listen to music for 3-4 hours straight. Confused the hell out of some senior management the other day because I was listening to some stuff by Ryo Fukui and I guess no one expects people under 57 to enjoy jazz.
I'm probably going to leave for my Master's study next fall and see if I can get into computer and AI engineering, but that's neither here nor there.
Lead 3D Modeller at a TV Digital animation studio
Although "Lead" is a bit misrepresentative, Im not really involved in team leadership so much as getting handed some of the more complex tasks and being responsible for coming up with efficient solutions.
Took a one-year intensive 3D Animation program after highschool and busted my ass at home improving my demo reel until this company hired me 5 years ago as a junior.
It can be boring and stressful sometimes and I can be stuck on abysmally boring children's shows for months at a time, but unlike most of the 3D industry Im not made to work unpaid overtime and I get benefits, so Im happy.
Sometimes I just need to remind myself to enjoy the artwork I make.
Got a part time job at a non-profit thrift store, after finally getting control of my anxiety and associated physical symptoms. I was hired specifically to screen media for quality and appropriateness (it's a christian ministry, but the money is going to a good cause, so I don't have a problem with following their standards), but I also do everything from sorting through donated clothes to cleaning the store. Eventually, budget permitting, I will get a raise and move to full time.
This is just a stopgap though: in about 5 months I'm officially going back to school full-time to work towards an eventual career in IT. It'll be all night classes, and I'll hopefully be moving out of my parents place next year too. So I intend to jump in the dating game as soon as the holiday season is over, and hopefully meet someone. All of my weekday social activities - which at the moment, is 100 percent of my social activities - are going to be cut from my schedule as soon as I start classes, so I want to avoid loneliness as much as possible, and having a girlfriend would undoubtedly make things a lot easier in that respect (though I am of course aware long term relationships take a ton of work). And I feel like I'm finally a good enough person to be worth dating (compared to, like, just a couple years ago), so I might as well get started on that as soon as possible.
Oh, I also work part time at the local used book store. Like, only 4 to 6 hours a week, but they pay 10 dollars an hour, so it's a nice supplement to my income while I'm still part time at my main job. And bothese jobs started as volunteer work with no pay. So seriously, if you're unemployed and living at home but for whatever reason can't find a full-time job, I'd recommend volunteering at as many places as possible. I was doing both the thrift store and the book store, plus volunteering at the library, before I got hired. They're generally much lower stress than most corporate jobs, usually require no prior education, and they can help get you back up on your feet while you formulate your next move. Most importantly, don't be ashamed at all, no matter what age you are - everyone has to start somewhere, especially if things out of your control are preventing you from getting jobs with better pay. I'm only 26 and I've already had to restart my life twice, and in both cases there was literally nothing I could have done to change my situation. All I could do was move on from there and try again.
Line service at an airport for the next few days and then I'll be done after 2.5 years of a garbage job. Hopefully getting a job with my degree after this.
Quality Assurance Masochist and Community Manager for an indie developer.
Unemployed at the moment, but otherwise I've doing contracting overseas. Big money for working in shitty places.
4th year international relations student and just got a job offer as a marketing specialist at one of the biggest food companies here in turkey.
though I'm considering declining the said offer and signing up for a gender studies masters program in germany instead.
I'm a part time usher at a local movie theater!
I’m a Tax Accountant at the graduate level. I help individuals and businesses meet their reporting obligations and to pay as little tax as they are required. I prefer to romanticise it and suggest that I rip-off the tax office, haha.
Actually very recently got accepted for a job at another practice, still in Tax Accounting. I beliefe the thing which got me over the line was I knew which rugby team the branch director (interviewer) supported, based on an archived ‘meet the staff’ blog post on his previous employer’s website, written four years ago. Attention to detail, boys and girls.
I'm a Paramedic, I stop natural selection.
Software engineer for a top defense contractor, it owns. I always wanted to do stuff for the us govt but fed employees get paid shit so i applied to contractors instead
on days off i wake up and i think “aw im not going to work today” so i think i like my job too much
I teach English online for an hour a week while I work on my CS degree. I'm not good at it and it's not fun, but it's enough to cover my rent every month. Additionally, I sell some XenForo add-ons, if that counts.
I do biophysics stuff at an R2 uni in the Midwest.
Most of my projects focus on combating antimicrobial resistance, but I'm also involved in a couple of projects where we're slapping polymers on proteins and getting new behaviors out of those bioconjugates.
Hours are extremely long, pay is marginal, and stress is pretty high (especially with shit like government shutdowns), but I get to play with big magnets, particle accelerators, robots, and super computers almost every day.
I work as a Director of Quailty at at machine shop. Seems boring, but it lets me practice investigation skills during the day.
If you went to medical school would you like to continue working in emergency medicine? My original plan was to complete medical school and then apply for a post as an ambulance service doctor (since my service had those).
CEO of my own game development company. Got lucky and was selected for a company incubator, made friends with the best investors and shipped games fast.
Before that? 5 years of dreadful WordPress shite with abysmal coding standards. Even before that we've got telemarketing and graphic design. I've always made games as side projects so having my own company was my dream job all along.
Started a cloud development consulting job with a fairly large consultancy firm a couple months ago. First month in, and our 10 man shaping team landed a £20m client contract for 12 months. So we all got a very nice Christmas bonus.
Slaving away for 80% of a living wage working on bigrigs and boxtrucks. I'm not gonna mention the company by name(Corporate literally has a department trawling the internet looking for mentions of the company and I'd rather leave on my own terms), but let's just say you could rent a truck I've worked on, that our company has a NASCAR team, and major companies like UPS lease trucks from us.
I'm pretty fucking sick of it, too. Lookin' to pull the loud handle in January, just have to find somewhere else to go first. Have too many bills to just quit outright and I can't draw unemployment if I quit.
Cost Analyst at one of the largest corrugated companies in North America. Literally, boxes. I get paid stupid good money/benefits to be an office jockey and make sure that we're shooting ourselves in the face as it's a hyperlean industry (see: profit margins usually at 5%, on a good day.) It's a kind of bizarre not-a-manager position where I have people report to me, but I'm not their boss. I don't face customers either, which is great.
My day-to-day involves bare-knuckle brawling with a data-rich but anti-user enterprise system and level 80 Excel wizardry when applicable, all while jammin out to tunes and podcasts at a standup desk. I have remote work options available, but the drive is like 5 minutes and I focus better there. I get tossed around on a lot of side-projects as well, be it technical or otherwise. It's an ancient industry that seems to pull people in and hold onto them because I have yet to see people escape. That said, it's the only industry I've been a part of where a majority of old-timers pulled their way up from schlump work on the factory floor (including about half of our management.) We're also big on being green (even if it's only because it benefits us) and pretty much immune to technological advancement until teleporters become a thing.
I love it and the people there (even if most are twice my age), but it's boring to talk about. I've done factory-floor work before elsewhere and there's a lot to be said about a flexible 8-5 job with benefits. It's the right amount of stress/freedom. Once I buy a house sometime next year, I'll figure out what to do on the side for my own self-fulfillment.
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